Abdel Khalek El Sayyed – Captured in Libya

March 16, 2011

My friend Adel Abdel Ghafar, who was with me on the Libya trip that I had blogged about, called me this evening to share the shocking news: Abdel Khalek, a 19 year-old volunteer from Cairo who was with us during the whole trip but stayed behind when we all returned to Egypt, was captured by Gaddafi’s forces.

In the video that I put together after coming back from Tubruq and Ben Ghazi, titled Libya’s Next Door, Abdel Khalek makes a number of appearances. I’ve also uploaded the raw footage I shot with him while we were at a restaurant in Tubruq, our first night in Libya. This gives you a brief idea of his revolutionary spirit, and his desire for Arab unity against corrupt dictators:

After capturing him, the pro-Gaddafi forces dressed him in military uniform and forced him to declare on public television that he is an Egyptian soldier hired by Al Qaeda to disrupt the Libyan regime, and that he had been consuming hallucinatory pills. The following is one of the two appearances he made on TV:

This is a disgrace. We simply cannot allow Gaddafi to torture, kill and manipulate his people this way. This needs to come to an end. Abdel Khalek has to come back home, Egypt needs its heros.

You can also follow the Facebook page that was made in solidarity with Abdel Khalek Al Sayyed Abdel Khalek.